hard drives Archives - Rick's Daily Tips

3 reasons why you need an external USB hard drive

Posted on August 14, 2023

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External hard drives used to be expensive luxuries that transferred data between the PC and the drive at a relative snail’s pace.

But thankfully, that has all changed thanks to the proliferation of incredibly fast, yet very inexpensive external USB hard drives.

In fact, prices have now dropped to where you can pick one up starting at around $50.

I now believe that every computer user should own at least one external USB hard drive, for the following reasons: [Read more…]

Q&A: Why do drive letters start with ‘C’ on Windows PCs?

Posted on November 16, 2022

Question from Brittney: I have a question I’ve been wanting the answer to for a long time and nobody seems to know the answer.

Now that I’ve found this site I’ll ask you!

I’ve noticed that the drive letters in computers always start with “C” and go up from there?

There doesn’t seem to be an “A” drive or a “B” drive. Can you tell me why that is?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: Will the photos stored on an unused hard drive last forever?

Posted on October 15, 2022

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Question from Stella: I have thousands of family pictures that I’ve copied onto an external hard drive, which I keep locked up in a fireproof lock box.

My question is will those pictures last forever or is their lifetime limited in any way?

[Read more…]

Q&A: Is it safe to span two hard drives to make one larger drive?

Posted on August 25, 2022

Question from Carl: I read here that you can “span” (i.e. combine) multiple hard drives and use them as one large drive and access them all with a single drive letter.

I have a used, but working 500GB hard drive at home that I could install in my Windows 10 desktop computer to span with the 750GB drive that’s already in it to effectively give me a 1.25TB drive.

Would you mind answering a question about drive spanning for me? [Read more…]

Q&A: Will an SSD work in an older computer that has a SATA II interface?

Posted on August 7, 2021

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Question from Richard G.: Hi Rick. I hope you can answer a question for me.

I have an old Gateway LX6810-01 desktop PC that came with a 640 Gig hard drive. The hard drive died and I want to replace it with a solid state drive (SSD).

My cousin has offered to sell me an unused 1TB Gig SSD for $45 which is half what he paid for it a just couple of weeks ago. He wants to sell it because he found out it won’t work with his old Leading Edge computer.

My question is will this drive work in my computer since the old hard drive had a SATA II interface and the SSD is SATA III? [Read more…]